Back to Belem

30.06.2016

In the morning I was expecting some sort of delicious breakfast, but all I got was a cheese sandwich. Excuse me, panini. Lame.

I was kind of bored with beaches, and the beaches on this island were more polluted than even the ones I went to in Vietnam. So, after breakfast I took the first bus possible out.

This meant waiting for over an hour with the town drunk in the main "square". Square here, means a few cement benches beside the road and a bakery.

He yelled at me words incomprehensible to even fluent Portuguese speakers, I'm sure and he was astounded when I didn't understand.

I kept telling him goodbye and he'd go for a few minutes, stumbling around the Main Street only to come back in a few more. Finally he decided to spend his valuable time doing something else and he eventually stumbled away.

The bus came and I took it to Salvaterra again. It stopped in the main plaza and the driver got off. He told me he was going to soure but he didn't. I had to catch a boat there.

I walked down to what looked like the pier and there was a boat with no one on it anchored there. Some random people were taking pictures but apparently didn't need a boat. They told me to get on and wait. I was mystified. Wait for who? Where was the driver? When did it leave? But I had no choice anyway, so I did. After some 20 minutes a few more people straggled in and we left for soure.

I needed to change my ticket but the office wasn't open so I looked for something to do. Lunch was a good thing to do and I saw some euro looking people to talk to. They thankfully spoke English and were also waiting for the boat.

I ate lunch in peace by myself with a water buffalo that is a sort of mascot for the town, and then went over to talk with them until the boat came. They were a couple in the television industry who were working on a true crime show in Belem. Some guy was caught paying for murders so that he could get higher ratings for his own television crime show by reporting on them first! True story! So they were dramatizing that and it all sounded really meta and crazy. Not my kind of tv and the lady scriptwriter didn't seem to like it either.

There was a lot of rain on the way back to Belem so the boat ride was a bit bumpy. Even water was coming in through the doors.

I walked all the way back to Gabriel's house and my stuff was still in my little room but it seemed that Michelle had moved in there. I started to look for another place to stay. When Gabriel and Michelle showed up though, they told me not to go. Ok! I think I had already made everyone sick with my terrible illness, and I felt bad for all the fighting. I thought they would need time alone.

Another ferry